


Torrential Overflow

by FindingZ



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bulges and Nooks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 11:15:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15840129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FindingZ/pseuds/FindingZ
Summary: The game is over. Everyone is finally able to relax and rebuild in 'Verse C. Except Eridan.





	Torrential Overflow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cryogenia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/gifts).



You’d really just wanted to _survive_.

It was almost laughable, really; because of that desperation you’d been wiped out. Not that you hadn’t deserved it, but. Well.

You’d like to think that your gut instinct would have steered you towards a _slightly_ better decision if you hadn’t been out of your mind with panic. It hadn’t mattered, though, because you’d died and gone to the dream bubbles. Then the _humans_ won the game.

You really hadn’t planned for what you’d do if you were resurrected.

‘Verse C is bright. Auto-tailored to fit the species that won, after all, so you spend as much of your time sleeping in your ‘coon as possible to avoid frying yourself to a crisp. When you’d first arrived you’d headed straight for the first body of water you saw ( _maybe,_ you’d thought, _maybe this won’t be so bad after all_ ) only to find out after submerging yourself – too late – that there was no salt in the water.

You’d spent the week after that curled up in sopor struggling to breathe through the swollen, throbbing, weeping remains of your gills. You still have the scars on your neck and torso from where you, in a fit of panicked desperation, had tried to scratch them open afterwards with your claws just a little so you could _breathe_. You’ve since found all the bodies of _normal_ water nearby, but you haven’t managed to work up the courage to move under the surface of the turbulent, frothy waves. You got as far as wandering up and down one of the beaches once, before you’d felt your throat closing up, caught in a sensory-memory of how you’d struggled and writhed in the peaceful embrace of the flat, stagnant water.

Your new hive is next to the water, though. The proper kind, the kind that you could theoretically live in if you worked up the courage to leave the land. You haven’t, though. You’re a seadweller in name only, now, and isn’t _that_ just fucking ironic.

The castes don’t even matter anymore. All of you – _all_ of you, from Fef down to Karkat and the mutated color that he weeps and bleeds – are equal under the eyes of statistical representation. Everything that your Alternia was built on _, everything_ , doesn’t matter anymore. Everything that you (thought) you stood for is just…irrelevant.

You were a wreck, that first sweep by yourself (year? You’re supposed to use the human vernacular now that you live on their damn planet but _gods_ none of it makes any sense. You don’t really belong here; you’re just tagging along on the coattails of those who did the _real_ work. A regular fish out of water, to coin the phrase). You got your shit together somewhere halfway through the second, though, and now that you’re just starting the third you’d like to think that you’ve started to be a troll again. Basically. You eat when you need to and sleep when you’re tired and, well.

That’s about all you do, really. You don’t bother trying to contact anyone else. Not after what you did.

You’re honestly surprised that they haven’t bothered to come for you. That first few months had seen you flinching at the slightest noise, imagining turning around to see the glint of claws or a blade as one of your former compatriots closed in for the kill. By now, though, you’ve more or less accepted that they apparently aren’t going to bother with the effort of erasing you again. You’re not really sure how to feel about it.

(you _deserve_ it, you deserve everything they could think up to inflict on you after what you did, but some tiny, selfish part of you is grateful that you still get to see the (singular) moonrise every evening)

 

* * *

 

It’s the sharp, clawing pain behind your eyes that wakes you up this time, rather than the burning itch of your dried and flaking skin. In your sleep you’ve kicked all your blankets and pillows away from where you lie curled up in the center of your makeshift pile-nest-thing, so when you roll over and slowly get to your feet you swear you can _feel_ each and every one of your muscles pulling your bones in all different directions.

By the time you wobble into the main block and rummage through the remains of last morning’s dinner for a few bites to chew on, your head is throbbing in time to your pulse. The cold mouthfuls that you scarf down are quickly followed by a handful of the painkillers you’d had the brainpower to alchemize before your alchemiter had fried itself, and you stand there for a moment or two taking deep breaths of stale, musty air to get your bearings.

You really should fix your alchemiter. It would require reaching out to one of the others for the spare parts, though, and you just, just _really_ don’t want to do that.

You might have to, though, given how fast your body is deteriorating from being exposed to the open air constantly without respite. Your head is starting to be a real problem, too. _Fuck_ but you need some sopor.

You’ll think about that later.

You _do_ need to think about hunting again. Yesterday morning saw you eating the last of your protein, and if you go too long on the vegetables and fruits that you’ve scavenged from the surrounding environment you’ll have more to worry about than your skin coming off.

The moon hasn’t come up yet. There’s the slightest hint of light on the horizon, still, bleeding into the ocean, but you don’t think it’s enough to hurt you if you went out. Much.

Still, though, you pull your makeshift veil from the heap of laundry on the floor behind the couch and secure it over your face. Just in case. The hood goes on, too, and after all this time you’re able to slip it over your horns with only a _little_ trouble. You pause for a moment when you step outside, focusing inwards to see if you feel the crackling-electricity feel of your skin starting to melt from the light. You feel fine, so you set off.  

You don’t think anyone would have recognized you in this getup, back on Alternia. Now, though, there’s only one troll left with horns like yours. Not that you’re expecting to run into anyone, mind – you imagine that word got around fairly quickly that you’d taken up residence in this little corner of land by the water, as you haven’t seen a single soul in…longer than you can keep track of. At least a year.

You prefer it that way. Really.

Really.

By the time you’ve gotten down to the shore, the light has disappeared from the sky. You’re confident that nobody ever comes to your little section of beach, so you don’t hesitate to strip all your clothes off and fold them up neatly before tucking them under a few rocks off to the side and wading out into the water with your canvas pouch on your hip.

Since your first encounter, there’s always that first moment of fear when your gills submerge as you remember the pain and how you’d struggled to draw even the smallest of breaths because it hadn’t even fucking occurred to you that a different planet would have different types of water on it.

Once you’re under, though, you can almost feel the tension leaving you to the same rhythm as the waves around you. _This_ is where you belong, where you’ve always belonged. Just you and the fish and the current.

Hunting here is almost laughably easy. Sburb, you think, didn’t bother to ingrain thousands of years of prey instinct into the wildlife here, so you can quite literally swim up to a school of fish, cram as many as you like in your hunting pouch, and swim away. Like picking fruit off a tree. You don’t even bother to kill them – the mesh of your bag is woven tightly enough that you can swim comfortably with your squirming cargo and not be impeded. You let the lack of oxygen do your job for you once you surface again.

You haven’t decided if you’re grateful for the easy guarantee of fresh food. It’s so _easy_ , and even though your stomach thanks you for never being low on fresh, tender fish, you almost feel guilty in a way. You didn’t have to do anything at all. You aren’t in any way shape or form earning your food. You aren’t earning anything, really.

_I don’t deserve this_ , you think to yourself as you dart away with your wriggling pouch.

You don’t.

 

* * *

 

There are no major landmarks on the ocean floor apart from the occasional stray stone. Like you’re in some sort of aquarium, scrubbed fresh and clean with new sand and clay. It unnerves you to no end, and also makes navigation annoyingly difficult. When you head back the way you came and breach the surface again, you’ve managed to drift quite a ways from your pile of clothes. The reflection of the now-risen moon on the water is pretty, though, so you flip over onto your back and kick lazily while watching the stars overhead.

It’s nice. More than nice. It’s moments like these that make you think that maybe it was all worth it. You drift in the moonlight and close your eyes, exhaling and enjoying the feel of being cradled by the waves.

“—buncha _rocks_ , I don’t see what’s so special about it.”

You nearly inhale water in the wrong place in your haste to right yourself when the voice reaches your ears. There, walking along the shoreline not a hundred yards from you, are some of the humans. Two of them. You don’t recognize them.

Your immediate instinct is to flee, but – well, it’s the first time you’ve seen anyone come this way in _so_ long. You stay where you are, swimming low in the water so your eyes and ears are barely above the surface. Humans have shit vision, right? They won’t be able to see you this far out.

“Yeah but have you _seen_ rocks like these before?” One of them bends down and rummages at their feet. “We didn’t have rocks like these on Earth!”

“A rock is a rock is a rock.”

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna be eating your words when you see _this!_ ”

You aren’t prepared for the stone to be flung across the water, skipping along the surface tension. You _really_ aren’t prepared for it to come directly at you, nor for it to ricochet off of your right horn.

It _hurts_. Your entire being is abruptly made up of prickly-hot _everything_ , reverberating through your bones and rendering you incapable of moving as the impact stuns you. You can’t help the yelp of pain and surprise that slips from you. You hear an exclamation from the shore from the one who threw the rock.

“Wait, what’s, is that – ”

Strength returns to you in a rush, and you duck under the waves, heart pounding, and dart away as fast as you can. When you come up again, you’ve overshot your hive and have to backtrack, but the humans are nowhere to be seen. You creep along the beach as naked as the day you hatched to collect your bundle of clothes, and then head for hive in a pained daze.

You aren’t fully present by the time you trek through the main room and deal with your catch (you _think_ you chuck it into the cooling cabinet?). The world is fuzzy and muffled, and by the time you sink into your pile and close your eyes you’ve got the beginnings of a raging migraine.

You sleep, eventually, but you wake up in fits and spurts, gasping your way to alertness, startled by noises that aren’t there. You haven’t had a horn injury this bad since you were a wiggler and _gods_ you’ve forgotten how it fucks you up afterwards, how your pan misfires left and right, feeding you sensory input that doesn’t exist. You drift for awhile, unsure of your surroundings.

In your delirium, you think you see cracks of light filter in through the blinds, but that can’t be right. You haven’t started losing time, you just laid down, how –

There’s a noise outside, like rhythmic thunder. You _hate_ thunder, hate the way you startle and feel your bones shake whenever you hear it. You do your best to bury your head under the nearest corner of your pile and ignore it, pulling yourself into a tight ball to keep the scraping, searing metal-on-metal sensation between your ears from escaping into other parts of you.

It _hurts_.

You drift for a bit more, and then –-

“Hey! If you’re going to live in a hive smaller than the Condesce’s nook hair you could at least make an effort to keep it _clean_.”

There is someone in your hive.

There is _someone in your hive_. Through the panicked ringing of your ears you can’t tell whose voice it is, and you lay in your pile frozen, trying to decide whether or not to bury yourself further like a wiggler and hope you aren’t spotted or….go out and see who the fuck just waltzed in. You’ve never bothered to lock and bar the entrance because nobody comes to visit you. Fuck.

There’s a rustling sort of noise that makes your decision for you, however – whoever they are, they’re going through your things. You don’t have very many, so even with your pan practically turned around backwards from the pain you’re willing to make a stand. A weak one, probably, if whoever is here is determined, but frankly your pan hurts so much that being fatally injured sounds like a reasonable outcome.  You stagger to your feet and only just barely catch yourself from reeling into the wall before making your way into the next room.

“Listen,” you begin as you round the corner, “I have the worst pan-ache known to trollkind so if you’ve come to steal all my shit or off me could you at least wait until I’ve had a nap or someth – “

Karkat is standing in your food preparation block with his back to you, rummaging through your cupboards. The dirty dishes from the previous night have been swept into the sink, soaking in a basin of soapy water, and a small semicircle of trash in the center of the room has been collected and put into the (empty) bin. Your cooling cabinet is open and noticeably emptier than before – you notice that the moldy vegetables that you’d been trying to work up the courage to clean up and eat have vanished.

You try to mask your sheer bewilderment by putting up an angry front. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

He turns to face you, and _oh_ he hasn’t changed at all. He’s grown (of course he has, it’s been literal sweeps, and even then he still isn’t as tall as a troll of his age should be – the top of his horns look like they’d barely reach your collarbones) and broadened some, but his face. His _face_. It’s exactly as you remembered it – the same high cheekbones, broad, flat nose, and full bottom lip – but his eyes have filled in at last. They’ve morphed into his blood color and the brilliant, gemlike red that sweeps up and down you unblinkingly is…unnerving, to say the least. You feel like an insect pinned to a rock under his gaze. You feel like he _knows_ you in some sort of intangible, incomprehensible way that he didn’t before, when you actually spoke on a regular basis. Just from glancing at you for a split second.

His head tilts, just a little, like he’s trying to make sense of you simply existing in the doorway. “I’m insulted that you think it would take me three goddamn sweeps to get my shit together if I had been wanting to come over here and kill you.”

You blink. Your pan is still rebooting and making sure all the device drivers are up to date, so you can’t managed more than a pathetic, “um.”

He gestures to the dishes in the sink. “You weren’t this much of a mess before. What the fuck happened to you?”

“It’s not that bad!” You find yourself blurting, and point to the other dishes, the ones off to the side. “Those are only four nights old, what’re you even talking about.”

One eyebrow raises very slowly and deliberately. You may have just proved his point. Why is he even making that point?

You’re tired. You’re _so_ tired and you just want to go back to your pile because you’d forgotten how exhausting social interaction was and you don’t even know why he’s _here_ after three fucking sweeps. He decides to just….show up and start cleaning your hive? He _says_ he won’t kill you but honestly you wouldn’t blame him if he was trying to get you to lower your guard because you really, really deserve it.

You don’t say any of that, though. You lean your forehead against the wall and close your eyes. “Why are you here, Kar?”

“John really did a number on you, huh?”

“What?”

He waves a hand at you. His claws are _trimmed_ , what in Condesce’s name? What sort of pampered, carefree life is he living that he’s got his claws cut into harmless, _humanlike_ rounded tips.

“Your horn. John was just about pissing himself last morning – nearly broke my door down trying to figure out if he’d just up and killed you via pan injury.”

“John?”

“The blue one.”

You have a very, _very_ vague memory of seeing lines of blue text on someone else’s screen. “Who was the other one?”

“Dave.”

“Ah.” Karkat’s flushmate. You feel strangely embarrassed to even think about the two of them, but you tuck that feeling away to look at when you _aren’t_ being closely examined.

“Let me see that.” He’s moving towards you, _harmless_ hands outstretched, but you flinch away on instinct. There’s a quick stutter in his motions, like he’s debating pulling back, but he keeps coming at you.

You aren’t proud of it, but the warm, calloused touch on your horn nearly undoes you – you haven’t felt someone else’s touch in, gods, at _least_ since the start of the Game. You end up leaning into his hand like one of those small fluffy creatures the humans seem to like so much. Tension drains from your whole body in a rush, leaving your head spinning.

“…cracked.”

“Uh?” You blink. In the second or two since he’d touched you, it feels like you’ve just woken up from a decades-long nap in the highest quality sopor around. If Karkat realizes just how pathetically you’re behaving after such an ordinary gesture, he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s cracked. Didn’t you look in the mirror to check the damage? It’s almost down to the nerve.”

To the _nerve?_ That can’t be right. You’ve always been told that cracking a horn to the nerve would come with the sort of pain that would put you out of commission for nights and nights. You feel…more or less functional.

Your hand reaches up to touch. A cold, instinctive bolt of fear crashes through your gut when your claws catch on the sharp, jagged gash right where the stone had struck you.

“…Fuck.”

Karkat sort of slow-blinks at you. “Where’s your medical kit?”

“Ablutionblock. I can do it myself.”

“You could.” He’s _still_ touching you. You’re finding it a little hard to concentrate. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

You can’t help but bristle, because, really, you aren’t _that_ useless. “I know how to fix horn cracks!”

“From schoolfeed or…?”

“ _Yes_ from schoolfeed, what does it matter?”

He shakes his head and nudges you backwards, steering you out of the block. “Just let me do it, asswipe. I’ll sleep easier later knowing you didn’t just snap it off by accident and call it a night.”

Easier…?

“Don’t see why you’d be concerned,” you mutter, and pull away from him. “Why’re you even here?”

“Where’s the ablutionblock?” He ducks past you, and you really, really just don’t have the pan capacity to try and decipher what sort of game he’s trying to play with you so you catch him by the arm and haul him back.

“ _Karkat._ ”

He looks up at you. Does that slow blink again. “I looked for you.”

“What?”

“The first sweep here. We knew you were here _somewhere_ , so we all thought you were just skulking somewhere nearby and nursing your dignity. Not that you had much left to tend to, at any rate.”

Ouch. Even though it’s true, you feel blood rushing up to your face fins and quickly duck your head so it’s not glaringly obvious how much that stung.

“So,” he continues, knocking underneath your chin with a knuckle to force your face back up, “I looked for you. Do you have any idea how much shoreline is within reasonable distance from where Sburb dropped us? You weren’t answering any of your messages so I started poking around to see if I could find you. I couldn’t, obviously, which seems pretty idiotic since you’re not even that far from me.”

“Why?”

He snaps his mouth shut; you look away and release him, feeling oddly abashed. “Look, it’s not exactly…I’m not, I’m not exactly a shining beacon of decency. Why did you bother?”

“Sgrub fucked us over. We all did what we thought was right” he says. Leans in a little, focusing on you so intently that you can see that his pupils have shrunk to little slits. “It’s hardly excusing your behavior, but we didn’t get pulled into this endgame for nothing.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” you argue. “What I did was – ”

“Terrible and cowardly and indicative of how despite all that ridiculous prattling about how great and special you are you’re about as trustworthy and loyal as the royal line of succession.”

You can almost _feel_ your fins drooping. You should have taken that class in schoolfeed to control your face like you’d been told to. “…Yeah.”

“But I know that the rest of us changed since then, though. It stands to reason that you might have as well.”

Clarity hits you between the eyes and leaves you smarting. “So, what, you’re here to check up on me? Just came by unannounced to see if I’d been in solitude long enough to beg forgiveness and prostrate myself at your feet and show you my neck and gills and everything, did you?”

He looks…a bit exasperated. That _is_ why he’s here, right?

“Just bring me the medical kit, Eridan.”

It’s stupid, it’s _so_ stupid, but no one has said your name in…unfathomably long. You feel a little justified in how your brain sort of shorts out when you hear it, leaving you to splutter some sort of affirmative before you limp away to get the case from the ablutionblock.

He’s sitting in your pile when you get back (in your _pile_ ), legs crossed neatly and watching you awkwardly kick things about so there’s room on the floor to place the supplies. You hesitate, trying to figure out if it would be weird if you got into the pile with him or weirder if you sat outside it on the floor or maybe you should stand? No, he wouldn’t be able to reach your damn horns in the first place given he seems so insistent on patching you up himself…

“Sit,” says Karkat, opening the box.

You sit.

He rummages for a bit, retrieving your container of disinfectant and the little tub of horn paste (unopened, with three sweeps of dust obscuring the lid).

“This will hurt.”

“No shit. It _already_ hurts, just do it if you’re gonna.” You curl your shoulders inward and tip your head towards him, closing your eyes.

The first touch of the wet cloth to the open wound has you flinching so fast you nearly rip his throat open when your horns snap up. You hiss through the sizzling pain and slowly, slowly lower your head back down. You absolutely aren’t shaking. Gods it _hurts_. He doesn’t say anything, just continues to dab the disinfectant into the gash in your horn like he didn’t nearly suffer a mortal injury. You can’t tell if it helps you keep control of yourself or not, his perceived nonchalance. You don’t make any noise other than your harsh breaths, though, so that has to count for something.

The gunk he packs into it dulls the pain some, but it brings with it a bizarre feeling of internal pressure that has you instinctively raising your hands towards your head, claws outstretched to try and dig it out. Again, Karkat stops but says nothing. You exhale a harsh breath through your front fangs and wring your hands together in your lap.

When you start to feel scraping on the outermost shell of keratin, you prepare to move away, assuming he’s done. He tugs you back with a hand in your hair, and you go very still.

“…What?”

You hear a snort above you. “What do you mean _what_ , I’ve still got to smooth the outside so it doesn’t grow back lumpy.”

“It’s fine.” You try to duck away from his reach. It doesn’t work. “Just leave it.”

“Sit _still_. What happened to the Eridan that polished and waxed his horns every morning before sleeping? He’s gonna come and throttle you if I don’t do this right.”

Likely dead in a dreambubble somewhere because Sburb decided he wasn’t worth resurrecting and passed him over for your sorry ass, you don’t say. “That stuff’s a waste of time now.”

You think Karkat is trying to hide his amusement, based on how the muscles around his eyes crinkle ever so slightly. “Just because you survived the end of the fucking universe doesn’t mean you get a free pass on hygiene, you utter ass instrument.”

“It’s not hygiene, they’re not dirty! It’s just – ”

“Basic self-care, is that it? Look at this.” Another scraping noise, and you see little chunks of the outer layer of your horn, nearly white with age, falling past your peripheral vision.

Oops. You hadn’t realized it had gotten that bad. “Yeah, well.”

“No excuse?”

“I just…don’t really have the energy.”

He tsks, and goes back to scraping at the non-injured bits. Your pile is going to be a mess later. You can’t remember the last time you exfoliated your horns.

You don’t know how long you sit there, hunched over, letting him work. When he wordlessly twists your neck to get at your other horn, you wonder if maybe…maybe you’re missing something.

“Why’d you stop looking?”

“Hm? Turn this way.”

You turn that way. “You said you stopped looking after awhile.”

“I don’t think you realize just how much fucking ground I had to cover,” he says. “Besides, I figured I was being an idiot searching on land as it was – I figured you’d have booked it at the first sign of freedom.”

“Ah.”

“Why _are_ you on land?”

You needle at your lower lip. “The, uh, the water here and I didn’t get off to a particularly marvelous start.”

He maneuvers your head back up. “All done. Take better care of yourself; I’m not gonna do this again.”

Some part of you (small, absolutely infinitesimal, practically nonexistent) wilts just a bit. “Thanks.”

He stands up and stretches, tilting his head back towards the ceiling, and _nope_ , no, you are absolutely not a lonely fool who’s reading too far into that. He relaxes, and you shift your eyes to the floor so he doesn’t think you were gaping at the smooth, unmarked skin of his throat.

“It’s funny,” he says. “You aren’t even that far from our hives.”

“Hives?”

He pushes past you and heads back towards the food preparation block. “We all decided to build in the same area. Sans you, of course. You’re not that far from us, though.”

“Yeah, well.” You follow him, picking at a loose thread on your sleeve. “I doubt I’d be met with a warm welcome if I decided to move any closer.”

“Maybe not, but this is a shitty way to live.”

You can’t help but laugh a little. The sound is empty to your own ears. “Got any other ideas?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and then he lets out a breath. You feel the overwarm touch of his hand on your wrist. “Don’t pick at the paste until it’s set.”

By the time you look up, he’s closed the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

“ _What_ did I tell you about picking at it?”

Your pulse is still recovering from being startled awake. You’ve been alone for long enough that his sudden presence hadn’t woken you until he’d called your name _after_ coming in, crashing through the food preparation block, and tromping into your respite block. “I didn’t!”

“What is _this_ , then?”

It’s several nights later. You’d reached out to him through Trollian but he hadn’t responded, so you’d glumly assumed that his social visit had been a one-off thing and had called it there. Yet here he is at nook-o-clock at night, peering into your pile and grasping your healing horn with a force that you feel should probably hurt if you were awake fully.

“What’s what?” You twist a bit and try to sit up but you get tangled in the utter disarray of your pile and end up just flailing a bit.

“There’s a chip, here.” You feel his thumb digging into a spot just under the main curve. “If I re-add the paste it’ll just make it worse. Hope you like having a claw-shaped dent in your horn, dumbass.”

You yank your head away and bury it under the nearest blanket. “Good. Maybe I’ll actually look fierce enough to get someone to look at me all pitch-like. Fuck off and let me sleep.”

He laughs. _Laughs_ , like the idea itself is ludicrous. “You are in _no_ state for pitch right now.”

Humiliation rushes through you like a riptide. “If you came here just to mock me why don’t you just shove your –”

He yanks on a bit of your hair. “I’m not mocking you, chute-whistle. I’m stating fact. Don’t you even _think_ about getting into pitch things right now – you’re so fucking vulnerable that they’d walk all over you.”

You can’t believe you woke up from good, deep sleep for this. “I can handle my damn self!”

“Not right now you can’t!”

“I’m telling you I _can_!” You try to stand up from your pile to get away (running away like a wiggler, that’s always been your style hasn’t it?) but he anticipates your escape and…ends up in your lap somehow. Fuck he’s _dense_.

“Get off!” You try to move him but he’s about as moveable as a brick waste disposal block.

You freeze when he grabs your face with both hands.

“Listen to me.” He puffs himself up and pulls your head down a bit so your eyes are level. “What I am _trying_ to say is that if you go ahead and try and get yourself a pitch partner right now it’s going to end chute-backwards for you because you won’t be able to contribute to the relationship in such a way that ensures your emotional needs are established and the right boundaries are set. You’ll be _taken advantage of_ and you’ll end up back here lonelier than a Helmsman’s bucket! You’ll be even worse off than you already are and you’ll just sit here and internalize it all and it’ll drive you to do the same stupid shit you did _last_ time. Do you understand me? You may have been joking but I don’t even give half a fuck – don’t even think about it. Okay?”

You’re too taken aback to do anything other than mutter a quiet affirmative.

“Look me in the eyes and enunciate it clearly. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“…Yes.” (last time? He’s not talking about…is he?)

“Do you really?”

“ _Yes_ , okay? Get off me.”

His grip tightens almost imperceptibly before he slides his hands away from you and stands up, brushing his pant legs free of dust that you know isn’t there. “Well. Good.”

“Good.”

You regard each other for a moment. Then:

“I haven’t forgiven you for what you did, and I don’t know if I ever will,” he begins. You flinch back. “But,” he continues, “I understand why you did what you did. I don’t like it and I don’t endorse it, but it’s happened and in a general sense we all survived in more or less one piece, so. I’m not saying that I’ve let it go or am going to magically let you off the hook because your internal self-loathing meter has reached critical mass, but _you_ know you fucked up. You’re not going to pull shit like that again, either from some sense of remorse, guilt, or the knowledge that if you try anything remotely like that again we’ll reduce you to ashes and snort them up and shit them out just to cremate any atoms that may remain.”

You gulp.

“But the thought of finishing what you tried to start hasn’t even crossed your pan, has it?” He tilts his head to the side like a squawkbeast (a carnivorous one, maybe, deciding if you’re worth eating). “You’re spending so much energy wallowing in your own remorse and self-loathing that you barely have the spare cells to take care of yourself properly, let alone plan some sort of retaliation against the rest of us. It’s…”

He trails off. You fidget for a moment, uneasy, and finally prompt him. “It’s…?”

You see the elegant, sturdy muscles in his throat work as he swallows. “It’s pitiful.”

Your first instinct is to shake your pan a bit. Something is clearly lodged in your ears.

He frowns. “That’s a no, then?”

“What?”

“What?”

You get to your feet. Stumble a bit (on your own clothing, what sort of clumsy cull-stock are you?) and cough to try and hide the startled noise as you almost fall flat on your face in front of him. “No, I just didn’t hear right.”

“No.” He folds his arms.

“No?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t…?”

He sighs. “You didn’t mishear me.”

“I…” What? “No, that’s, you can’t –”

You stop abruptly. He’s gripping at his sides under his folded arms. Are his hands…shaking?

You blink. Feel like some sort of cosmic force is slotting out of alignment.

“You pity me?”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “As nice and uncomplicated as it would be for me to _not_ to, yes. I do.”

“Ah.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

Your pan is devoid of things to say. You feel a bit like he’s just told you that day and night have switched places.

Karkat turns suddenly and starts heading for the door. “If you don’t have anything to say then I guess I was wrong. Sorry to, sorry to _bother_ you or whatever scathing retort you’re planning right now. I’ll just see myself out.”

You panic. “No, wait!”

He stops.

You try and force your pan to work. Words. You need words. “I’m just, I’m, I’m thinking. Sit, please?”

He turns, visibly reluctant. After a moment he sits down right there on the floor. You can see the effort he’s putting into not hunching into himself defensively.

He’s…nervous. Anxious. He cares about what you’re going to say? For some reason. You realize that from your standpoint you’re basically looming over him, so you sit as well.

The silence stretches on. Eventually you come to the realization that you’re not going to be able to format a perfect response, so you take the risk of opening your mouth and hoping that something coherent and not utterly insulting and repugnant comes out.

“Sorry, I’m just…I didn’t think that I, that I would be – that someone would be able to pity me. After, well. All that.”

You sneak a glance at him. He’s looking at you with a completely blank, unreadable expression. Okay then. Unhelpful. You carry on.

“I figured that if I was going to have a _chance_ at a quadrant it was going to be pitch. Not that I think that anyone is pitch for me!” You catch yourself waving your hands around, though your eyes don’t leave your lap. “Just that I, I assumed it would be easier to take platonic hatred and turn it pitch than to turn it flush. You know?”

Karkat makes a soft sound. You want to peek up, but visions of what he’d look like with disgust painted all over his face dance in your pan’s eye, so you don’t.

“So I, I appreciate your…confession. I do. I’m…flattered? But I don’t think, I don’t think that I can do flush. I don’t have it in me. I can’t feel those sorts of things anymore. Not after, not after Sgrub. I’m just empty.”

You hear him stand and come towards you. You curl inwards, anticipating a blow, but start and raise your head when he simply sits down again with his knees brushing yours.

“It’s because you’re _depressed_ , you absolute fuckwaffle.”

“What?” He looks upset. You don’t know what you’ve said to make him upset. Is he angry that you can’t give him what he wants from you?

“Just answer me straight, okay? Don’t do what you always do and run in circles trying to say what you think I want to hear.”

“Okay?” You’re so confused.

He leans forward and bumps his forehead to yours. His skin is overwarm and softer than you imagined. “I pity you. Forget about everything that you think is keeping you or should be keeping you from giving me a clear answer, and just say yes or no. Do you want to be flush with me?”

_Oh gods he really means it_ , is your first thought. _How the fuck does he expect me to be a functional flushmate?_ Is your second.

Your third is, _wait a second._

You level your pointer finger at him. “You already _have_ a flushmate! What kinda game are you –”

“Dave has two,” Karkat says evenly.

“What?”

“Dave is with me and also with John. Humans have a word for it, I think, when someone has multiple of a quadrant.”

“O-oh?”

“Yes, _oh_.” He says. “And if _he’s_ capable of handling two flushmates then I absolutely can, so. You don’t have to worry about Dave coming for you and erasing you from existence.”

Understanding makes your blood freeze. “So you thought you’d try to one-up him and, what, figured I’d be easy? The best way to boost your numbers in a hurry?” You try to stand up and pretend you’re more outraged than hurt. He stops you from going anywhere once again by being as dense as a black hole.

“What I _thought_ is ‘thank fuck he brought it up so I don’t have to think up a smooth way to mention that I want the same thing.’”

You blink, blood warming again as clarity is bangs at the door to your pan. You aren’t sure how to deal with the shit you’re inevitably going to feel if you let it in. “Oh.”

“I want you as a flushmate. Is that so hard to imagine?”

You say nothing. The _‘obviously’_ is left unsaid. He sighs a bit.

“Just, can we try? Please. If you want, which I think you do because you have the most un-subtle face I’ve ever seen.”

You swallow. Your consciousness sternly tells you that this will probably end up setting you back several sweeps in mental stability when he decides that you’re not worth it after all. Your subconsciousness tells you that you might be able to make some good memories for the first time in a long while, even if you’re left behind again afterwards.

“…Okay.”

He leans back, like he’s a bit surprised. “Okay?”

“I mean, yes? If you haven’t, if, if you haven’t changed your mind?”

“I literally _just_ asked seconds ago.”

“Well yeah, but –”

“ _Yes_ , the offer is still in front of you.”

“Then…yes.”

Warmth. His forehead touches yours very gently and you feel hothothot air ghost over your jaw and throat when he exhales against you. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

Having a flushmate is different. Having _Karkat Vantas_ as a flushmate is, quite frankly, something that you assumed was only possible in the most lucrative of dream bubbles.

You don’t quite know what you were anticipating, when you initially agreed (hah, _agreed_ , like there was any chance of you turning him down). You don’t have the experience to figure what’s normal in a budding flush relationship, but you thought that at least it wouldn’t necessarily be so…touchy. With Karkat, anyway.

Karkat seemed to make some sort of decision to be puttering around your hive at least every other night, for starters, just being in your space. He talks a lot about the rest of your group: about Dave, about Sollux, about _Fef_ , gods, it’s hard to keep yourself composed when he talks about Fef. You manage, somehow.

He’s always _touching_ you. You hadn’t anticipated that he would turn into a barnacle at the slightest provocation. You can’t so much as sit down to watch a movie without feeling fingers in your hair or rubbing your horns, a warm body pressed into your side, or soft breaths against your skin. When he falls _asleep_ on you for the first time you nearly flip.

The amount of trust he appears to have in you is terrifying. You don’t deserve it. You haven’t done anything to deserve his trust. You’re a _murderer_ and a saboteur and if you had known about his mutation before Sgrub you, you probably would have shown up to cull him yourself. And he trusts you enough to sleep in your lap.

You don’t understand it, but you don’t want to bring it up in case it breaks whatever magic has settled over you to make such a thing possible, so you just…accept it. You try not to go boneless and sleepy whenever he plays with your hair and you start sitting with pillows and blankets nearby whenever the two of you watch movies together for when he inevitably dozes off.

He keeps coming to see you, so. You must not be fucking up _too_ badly.

(you don’t go over to his hive. You aren’t remotely ready to deal with how everyone would react to seeing you. Karkat seems to realize this, so he doesn’t question it)

He doesn’t kiss you, though. For all the trust he seems to have in you, he doesn’t do anything remotely flush. At all. A few times you’d glanced over at him to be startled by just how _close_ he is to your face, but he’d always pull back before you could collect your wits and maybe consider leaning in just a bit to close the rest of the distance.

Does he not want to? You wouldn’t blame him. Not really. He’s survived enough that he could probably wake up if you moved to harm him while he was sleeping, but you doubt he’d be able to stop you in time if you were kissing and you decided to go for his throat.

That’s probably why.

So why is he with you, then?

You sit on the question for half a perigee. You debate the pros and cons of asking him and hearing him tell you that ‘ _actually Eri, this is all an elaborate prank to fuck you over because you’re the worst excuse for a troll I’ve ever met’_ versus having him go _‘oh, have I not crossed this major flush milestone with you yet? Let me fix that right now_.’

You think that maybe, just maybe, you’d rather _know_ that he was pretending to be flush for you and end up alone again then to believe that you were deserving of all this only to have it be thrown back in your face later.

It takes you a bit longer to work up the courage. You wait until one of your movie mornings, when he’s curled up against you like usual, radiating heat like the sun itself.

Deep breaths. “Hey, Kar?”

The blanket lump under your arm hums a bit. He’s listening.

“I was wondering if, ah. Well. If you wanted to – if you _wanted_ to. Maybe. With me, I mean. I mean, obviously me? You already, with Dave, yes? Not that I’m assuming! Or thinking about you and Dave. That is –”

“Eri.” A hand reaches forth from the cocoon and smacks over your mouth. “What the actual shit are you trying to vomit into my auricular sponge clots?”

“Um!” You knock his hand away. “Flush things. With me?”

( _fuck_ )

Karkat’s entire head appears. He’s blinking up at you like you’re a particularly bizarre deep-sea creature that’s landed in his grubsauce. “Yes?”

“…Yes?”

“I’m assuming you’re not referring to the things that we’re _already_ doing?”

“I want, um,” you begin, and feel yourself flush. You feel like a wiggler asking for extra, unwarranted portions at mealtimes. “I was rather hoping that you might, that we could, ah –”

Karkat interrupts you as he sits up, dislodging the ring of soft things he’d amassed around himself (and you). “You want to pail?” A little smile (a _smile!_ ) flits about his mouth. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

_What_.

Your pan just. Stops right there. Reboots. You even get the little noise playing through your mind because you’ve obviously lost it.

You swallow a few times. Lick your front fangs. “I was actually wondering if I could kiss you,” you manage to say, as clean and eloquently as a line from a movie.

It hadn’t even _occurred_ to you that he’d want to pail you.

He wants to _pail_ you?

_You_?

“Oh,” says Karkat. “I see.”

You can’t tell what sort of tone his voice has undertaken. You get the gist, though; he doesn’t want to put his throat anywhere _near_ your fangs, but he’s okay with pailing you. Okay. You can...you can do that. You don’t blame him for being wary of you. He’d be _much_ more vulnerable kissing you than if the two of you were, were getting down to business, so you don’t even blame him. He could find ways to control you to keep himself safe while pailing you if that’s what he was worried about – not so much if you just went and introduced your mouth to his.

“It’s okay that you don’t want to!” Your hands flutter about in your lap. “I get it, if you just want to, want to pail and that’s it, that’s okay.”

“I don’t want to…?”

He’s phrasing it like a question, but that can’t be right; he’s probably just looking for confirmation.

“Yeah.” You tuck your hands under your legs to keep them still. “Do you – did you want to pail, uh, now? Or were you thinking, ah –”

“Why do you think I don’t want to kiss you?”

“Well, it’s obvious!” You really, really don’t want to look at him.

“Is it?” He kicks away the blankets and pillows and situates himself in your lap, for some reason, forcing you to look at him. His eyes are _intense_ , gods, why is he looking at you like that? “Explain it to me, then.”

“There’s nothing to explain!” Why is he making you spell it out his own distrust in you? “You don’t want to risk it with me, and I can, I can respect that! I _understand_. I just thought that, maybe, uh, since you seem okay with risking p-pailing me you might be okay with, with –”

“Hey, hey.” His forehead thunks against yours. “Am I a raging cullskull?”

“No?”

“Do I make a habit out of making horrible decisions?”

“…No?”

“Then tell me,” he says, and wraps his arms around your shoulders, clasping them together between your shoulderblades. He’s so _warm_. “Why would I put myself in a quadrant – a _red_ quadrant – with someone who was going to kill me the second I was vulnerable?”

“I’m not! But –”

He puts a hand over your mouth. “No, shut up. You think that I’d go as far as to pail someone I wasn’t even comfortable kissing? Do you think I have my priorities _that_ backwards?”

“No!”

“I swear to gods, Eri.” He brings a hand around from behind you to trace the thin, delicate skin under your eye with the pad of his thumb. “You’re the densest thing under the moons.”

He kisses you.

He’s not gentle about it, not like you thought he’d be during the few times you let the fantasy of it slip past your own cynicism. He bites at your lower lip hard enough that you jump at the pressurized sting of it, tugging on it when you squirm a little. He tastes like clean skin and nothing more.

He pulls back, frowning. “Are you okay? I thought – did you not want to?”

“What? I’m fine, why did you stop?” Your hands have fisted in the material of his shirt, unbidden.   

“You were frozen.”

“No, I just, it was a lot. I’m fine! Please, can we –” You hate the whiney, nasal tone your voice has taken on, but you can’t help it. Not after he – not after he kissed you like it was nothing, like it was the easiest, most natural thing for him.  Not after he put the idea in your head that he might do it _again_.

He regards you for a long moment. In the light from the paused movie and what dim rays of light seep through the blinds in the windows, his eyes have taken on an eerie glow.

You try again. “Please?”

You think he’s trying not to smile as he leans back in. Then you feel the scrape of his lips against yours and you promptly forget about it.

His skin is softer than yours, and more pliable. _Like a human_ , you think, and immediately squash from your pan when his teeth nick your tongue. When he draws back again, his front fangs are stained your color, which, _gods_.

“Why do you keep stopping?” You croak. You sound ridiculous but you can’t bring yourself to clear your throat and try again.

“I _do_ want to pail you, you know.”

_Oh_. “Yeah?”

“Do you have any idea how pathetic you are, Eridan?”

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck there goes your bulge perking up in its sheath. You feel your face fins flushing with all the blood rapidly travelling to your head. You feel a little woozy. He runs a claw along the base of your uncracked horn and you practically dissolve into the couch.

“Like that, gods. I barely even have to _do_ anything. Just look at you,” he says, and you just, you can’t handle the low undertone his voice has taken on. “Just look at you, Eri.”

“I’d rather not, thanks.” Your attempt at muffling your entire face into the nearest pillow is foiled when he gets an arm under your back and pulls you close against him.

“Making me haul ass and do all the work for you, hm?” He tugs at your shirt. “Can I take this off?”

“Uh.”

“No?” He lets go immediately.

“You really, you wanna do this now?”

His weight shifts in your lap, like he means to get off you. “If you don’t, that’s –”

“No! No, I do, I just…really?”

His pupils have shrunk to tiny pinpricks, nearly invisible amongst the deep red surrounding them. He looks entirely otherworldly, like something from a dream. He tugs your shirt up just a bit, exposing your belly. “Really.”

You’re overtaken by the realization that you’re going to feel all his superheated skin against yours. Suddenly eager, you pull away a bit to yank your shirt the rest of your way over your head and toss it to the side. You have your claws in his and have it worked halfway up his torso before you stop. Karkat has always kept himself covered in as many shapeless, baggy clothes as possible as long as you’ve known him. Maybe he’s not comfortable with you taking his shirt off? Maybe he doesn’t want –

He bats your hands away and seconds later his shirt joins yours somewhere on the floor.

_Oh_ , he’s nice to look at. You run your hands up his sides, utterly fixated by the contrast between the rough texture of his grubscars and how his stomach has more give to it than you expected. He arches his back with a little noise when you slot your fingers into the divots between his ribs.

“You’re so warm,” you manage to get out. Your voice still has that rough texture to it, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He shivers once, twice, and leans to rest his head on your shoulder.

“And you’re _cold_.”

Shit. “Sorry, should I…?” You take your hands away.

He catches them with his own and puts them back. “It’s nice. The difference.”

You run your fingers along his collarbones, admiring how they sweep up and cast shadows on the skin underneath. “This is okay?”

He huffs and goes for the button on his pants. “If it wasn’t I’d have told you already.”

“Right,” you say, transfixed by the bounce-wriggle motion he does to slip his pants off without leaving your lap. And, and, _fuck_ , you’ve now got an entirely naked Karkat in your lap.

This was…not how you anticipated this morning to go.

“Alternia to Eridan.” He flicks your forehead with a finger. “Are you just gonna stare all day?” A beat, and then you can see him start to curl inwards a bit, self conscious. “Was this too fast? Fuck, I’m sorry, I just thought –  I don’t _know_ what I thought. I wasn’t thinking at all. I’ll just –”

You stop him before he can reach for his clothes. “No, no, sorry, I just, you’re just, you’re…”

He halts his motions and tilts his head at you.

“You’re gorgeous,” you finish. “

That tiny ghost-smile again. “ _I’m_ gorgeous? Did you break all the reflection planes here?”

Your fins flare out, which is unhelpful in your quest to hide how stupid a basic compliment makes you. “I’m jus’ sayin’.”

“Hmm. Can I do you?”

“Thought that was the plan,” you mutter, trying very hard to not burn a hole in his abdomen with how hard you’re staring at the outer expanse of his sheath. It’s swollen flush with blood and you want, very suddenly, to know intimately what his skin tastes like there. You have a feeling that the seam of your pants is probably starting to dampen with slick. You should probably move before it ruins the couch cushions.

_Gods_ but he looks so nice and he’s looking at you like, like, you don’t even have a word for it.

“I meant the rest of your clothes, but that’s also an option.”

“Oh.” You don’t know why you feel like you’ve gotten hit over the head with embarrassment. “That’s, yeah, that’s okay too.”

He clambers off of you and pulls you to your feet, divesting you of the last of your clothes with an efficiency that is absolutely unfair, given how useless you became at nothing more than how the light from the TV played off of his skin as he moved.

“You’re _wet._ ”

You resist the urge to snatch your pants back from him. “Pretty hard not to be under the circumstances.”

He snorts. “Flatterer. Do you want to stay here or go somewhere else? Material is a bitch to get out of upholstery and I refuse to watch movies with you on anything else.”

If anything, the off-handed comment makes you relax. Nothing is going to change after you pail. He’ll still come over and sit next to you and talk over all the important bits of movies like he always does. He’ll still be with you after this. You haven’t ruined it yet.

“Pile?”

He kicks the discarded clothes on the floor out of his way, and takes off towards the respiteblock.

He almost seems _excited_.

You feel a little less awkward about how your thighs are slipping against each other as you move when you catch up to him and find him rearranging your pile with his tongue between his teeth in concentration, seemingly uncaring of the fact that in the few dozen steps from the couch he’s fully unsheathed and is dripping thick, viscous strands of fluid all over your clean blankets.

You want to know what he tastes like. Your own fluid had tasted a bit salty-bitter like the sea, during the few fleeting moments you’d allowed yourself to slip your fingers into your mouth after messing around. He probably doesn’t taste like you do, might even taste terrible for all you know, but _gods_ you want to find out either way.

He’ll probably be just as warm there as he is everywhere else, you think, and feel your mouth start to water a bit.

He turns around. “Good enough?”

You nod wordlessly and tug him back to sit down with you, not trusting yourself to speak without making a fool of yourself. As soon as he’s settled, you reach out a hand and look up, wondering if he’ll tell you to stop.

He just grins at you, a broad thing that has his top fangs putting dents in his lower lip. You’re caught for a moment between wanting to smooth them out with your mouth or your thumb and reaching into his lap.

You realize that you can do both because genetics were kind to you and gave you the ability to multitask. You lean in and kiss him again.

He keeps alternating between slow, practically pale kisses and nipping _hard_ at your mouth and jaw, which is terribly distracting and the reason you don’t manage to convince your hands to do anything other than hang uselessly at your sides for a good while – it’s not until you feel the graze of teeth along the arteries of your throat that you’re spurred into action and slip a hand down the smooth expanse of his stomach.

Your journey is arrested by something very warm and very wet curling around your wrist, accompanied by a full-bodied shudder from him. You can’t tilt your head down to look at what part of his bulge you’re touching or what he looks like because his own is in the way as he continues on his quest to write his name on your throat in teeth prints.

You can certainly _feel_ him. His bulge has your wrist in an iron grip and is currently trying to weaving itself between your fingers, squeezing them together with more strength than should be legal, strictly speaking. You think about how good it’s going to feel twined around you (and in you? Would he do that for you?) and can’t repress a violent shiver that nearly dislodges him from your lap.

To call yourself overeager would be a bit of an understatement.

You move your hand around a bit until you catch the tip between the pads of your finger. It fights you, squirming and effectively getting your thighs, stomach, and most of your forearm covered in pre-material. You manage to crane your neck away from Karkat’s ministrations (you’re _cold_ now, when you pull away and the patches of saliva he’s left behind start to cool in the morning air) to finally get a good look at him.

You haven’t been with a lowblood before (or anyone, really, but that’s entirely besides the point). You’re not sure what lowbloods are supposed to look like, but Karkat looks…a bit plain. If you’re being entirely honest. He’s got no frills or fins or ridges or…anything, really. His bulge is just a smooth expanse of skin, thick at the base and rapidly tapering off to an almost severe point currently trapped between your thumb and index finger. It’s more than friendly enough to make up for his cosmetic differences though, so you don’t put much effort into thinking about it.

Karkat lets out a shaky little breath and puts his head on your shoulder. “You’re being very distracting.”

“ _I’m_ being distracting?” You let the tip of him go and dip your hand down to rub the stretched, smooth expanse of skin where his bulge emerges. His hips twitch up once, twice, and he bats your hand away.

“I’m trying to focus!”

Part of you is miffed that you’ve been redirected; part of you is a bit aghast that you have such an effect on him.

Or maybe he’s just super sensitive. That’s probably more likely, but you feel like your shriveled ego is allowed to pretend for a bit.

“Focus on what?” You can’t think of anything _better_ to be focusing on in this sort of moment.

“I’m trying to focus on _you_.”

“Me? I’m not even doing anything!”

He pushes you over backwards and scoots back to sit just above your knees. “You would be if you let me work.”

“Well if you think it’s _work_ –”

“That is in no way what I meant.” He plants both hands firmly on your stomach and hunches over you, peering down at you. “You’re still sheathed?”

“Uh.” If you were a braver troll you’d wriggle to dislodge his gaze. “Is that bad?”

“No.” His fingers drum out a little pattern as he draws them down your hip, past your (closed) sheath, and down behind, nudging your thighs apart with the back of his hand to get better access. “Just surprising. You’re _really_ wet here.”

You twitch on instinct when you feel him run a finger up the seam of your nook, the slip-slide melting-electric feeling making a muscle in your leg jump. He smiles a little, a quiet, toothy thing.

“Sensitive?” One finger becomes two, tracing up and down with barely any pressure – just enough sensation to get you to zero all your attention there without the buildup that would mean you were getting anywhere. “What about here, then?” His other hand presses on the outskirts of your sheath, poking at it like he means to try and hook a finger inside to pull your bulge out.

Just that is almost too much, and you can’t help the frantic little yelping noise that comes out of your mouth. He stills and looks up at you.

You…don’t really want him to stop, even though it had felt like someone had run a current up your spine and your first instinct had been to get away from the feeling.

“No, no, it’s fine, it’s just…sensitive.”

“Oh yeah?” He brings his hand back and continues poking and prodding, running his finger up and down and _inside_ , fuck, that feels –

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” you croak out, and try to unclench your hands from their death grip on the material under you. “Yeah, that’s, that’s good.” 

“ _There_ you are,” he says, when you feel the shift-and-release pressure change in your gut that tells you without having to look that your bulge is starting to come out. “I was starting to wond— _oh_.”

You hear the note of surprise in his voice and freeze. Not the greatest thing to hear from your flushmate. After a heartbeat of gazing at the ceiling as hard as you can in complete silence, you chance a peek down to see what he’s going on about.

Your bulge is out all the way, plumping up with material and starting to drip pre-fluid over your lower belly. The fin-frills at the base have started to flare out already, flush with blood, and the suckers that run up the length of the underside have opened all the way, shivering a bit in time with your pulse.

From Karkat’s point of view you probably look like some weird alien, given how nondescript he himself looks.

Fuck.

You start to squirm out from under him, shifting your weight in preparation to get him off of you without just dumping him on his ass. “If it’s, if you think it’s, it’s weird or that it’s not going to work I can, um, we can just sleep? Or finish the movie or something, or…” You trail off helplessly, trying to get your feet under you so you can stand up and grab your clothes, but, _shit_ they’re in the recreation block which means you’d have to make a run for it –

You’re pushed down onto your back again, less gently less time.

“How about you let _me_ decide what’s too weird and alien for me to pail, huh?”

“But you –”

“Were blindsided by how fast I need these fuckers –” he lets a sucker clamp down on his outstretched finger, “— in me as soon as physically fucking possible.”

All the fight goes out of you in a big, shuddering rush. “Really?”

“Really. But, ah,” he blushes. _Blushes_. You got Karkat Vantas to blush, mother of gods. “If you don’t want to that’s fine, that’s absolutely – it’s just something that I _may_ or may not have spent time thinking about. At some point.”

That seems entirely out of character for him. Karkat doesn’t – he doesn’t pine away like some sort of protagonist. He goes and gets what he wants and the universe had better get out of his way before –

Your train of thought is promptly derailed when he wraps both hands around you and _squeezes_.

“Guh.”

“Can you pail me first?”

_First_? “You’re gonna kill me.”

He raises an eyebrow. “That’s not a no.”

“It is absolutely not,” you say, and go to nudge him over, assuming that he’ll want to be on his back, before he stops you. “How do you want to…?”

“Like this?” He scoots up your legs a bit, seemingly quite comfortable perched on you. You swallow.

“Y-yeah. Okay.”

He spends a moment just running his hands up and down your skin, letting his (regrowing) claws catch and dig at random. You hold your breath, closing your eyes to focus on how nice the weight of him is in your lap.

You can’t help but make a small _eep_ noise when he grabs your bulge again, lifting himself up onto his knees ( _oh_ his thighs are nice, how did you not notice before?) and staring down at you.

“Okay?” His hips are shifting back and forth, like he’s already subconsciously crammed you into him.

You grab his hips in answer and tilt your own up, bending your knees up and planting your feet flat, inviting him to sit.

He goes slow, keeping a hand clamped around the middle of your bulge to keep it from making a break for it and burrowing into the hot, hot heat of him. The second you brush against him, though – the second you make contact and feel his nook start to drip sluggishly down your bulge – you forget yourself, pulling him down fully onto your lap, wanting to get closer, closer, _he feels so good, fuck_ –

He yelps, breaking you out of your endorphin fugue.

_Shit._ “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean, you just – are you okay?” He’s shaking, a fine series of tremors just under his skin. His breathing has gone a bit shallow. You hold very still, not wanting to hurt him even more by moving.

He takes in several huge gulps of air, shifting his hips back and forth a bit. His (now messy) hands curl into loose fists on your stomach. He’s squeezed his eyes shut. “N-no, don’t – I’m fine, just – _ah_.”

You’re trying your hardest to not let your suckers attach inside him, stomach muscles shaking from the strain of keeping yourself still. He’s so, so unbelievably warm inside, soft and yielding to you like he was _made_ for you.

“Please,” you grit out, “please, Kar, can I –?”

 He opens his eyes again. His pupils are shot, and he regards you with an expression that you thought only existed in movies. “ _Please_ ,” he parrots back at you, and that’s all you need.

The pull-tug-release motion of your suckers inside of him undoes you almost immediately. You barely have to move to feel like you’re on the razor’s edge of release – just the slow back-and-forth when you clamp down on and release the walls of his nook is enough to have you making inane little noises. You don’t know what to do with your hands. He feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

He’s making an absolute mess in your lap. His bulge trying to twist itself into knots to get stimulation, dripping over the both of you and making the way he’s rocking back and forth in your lap into a smooth, frictionless glide. The spatters of his pre-material feel like they’re burning you as they drip down you into the pile.

He chirps suddenly and his whole body stiffens up, short claws digging into your skin. “Oh, oh, _Eri_ , you feel – like that, don’t change a thing, don’t –!” His movements have taken on a tight, hurried pace.

_Gods_ he feels so good. You don’t know what you’re doing to make him feel as good as he seems to be feeling, but you don’t think you could have changed up what your bulge was doing if you wanted to.

Your release creeps up on you with all the subtlety of a stampeding hoofbeast. Heat trickles through your blood, seeping up from your hips to your mind, leaving you a dazed mess. You think you’re making urgent, desperate little sounds. You can’t stop the fierce, upward grind of your hips. You hope you aren’t hurting him.

His forearms give out and he drops to his elbows, braced above you. He hasn’t stopped rocking.

“ _Eri,_ ” he breathes, and comes all over your stomach.

His nook wrings tight around you, pulsing like a heartbeat, and you just –

“Fuckfuck _fuck_ , Kar, it’s, I’m, please, _please_ ,” you babble. You’re going to come whether or not you’re prepared for it, fuck, “ _flushed_ , flushed, I’m flushed, _Karkat_ –”

Your orgasm feels like taking a rock between your eyes. You can’t breathe, you can’t even _see_ , it feels like you’ve been pushed headfirst into the warmest sopor imaginable, rendering you useless and pan-mushed.

You come down in fits and starts, overcome by shivers and shakes that only serve to make your bulge thrash, still inside Karkat, prolonging the feeling.  

You’re left limp and feeling like you’ve just run laps around the planet. You slowly become aware that you’re crying.

“Oh, Eri.” Hands cup your face, thumbing away your tears. You blink a few times until Karkat’s face swims back into focus. “Was that too much? Are you okay?”

You don’t’ have the energy to speak yet. He starts to withdraw, brows furrowing, but you reach up and seize him by the shoulders, pulling him down so he’s mashed against you chest to chest. You exhale, feeling like the weight of him is making you lighter and lighter by the second.

You can’t believe you get to have this with someone. With _Karkat._ You don’t deserve it, but he makes you feel like you do.

“It was, it was just a lot.” You bury your face into his hair, breathing in his Karkat-ness. “Thank you.”

You feel him snort. “If someone is going to be thanking anyone, it should be me, stupid. I could practically feel my pan coming out my bulge.”

You can’t help it – you giggle, hard enough that you nearly jostle him off you.

He presses his nose into your neck. “That wasn’t even funny.”

You tip your head back to regard the ceiling. You can’t get the grin off your face. When was the last time you smiled like this? “It was a little bit.”

“Excuse me, when did you become the beacon of humor and mirth? It wasn’t funny.” He rolls off you, stretching out on his side and tucking himself into you. “You just have a wiggler’s pan.”

“That’s probably true,” you say, and turn to kiss his forehead. You feel more at ease than you have in, in eons. You think that you’re going to be okay. 

You have a flushmate to keep you in line when you aren’t, after all. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The actual title is "The torrential overflow of emotions and jizz (but mostly emotions)," in case anyone is curious. 
> 
> I had *so* much fun writing this! Thanks to cryo for the great prompt and for giving me a reason to write angsty Eridan again :V I hope you enjoy!


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